Akash, R., Sarathi, R., Haddad, Manu  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4153-6146 and Shivananju, Bannur Nanjunda
2026.
Dual optical measurement for early detection of tracking in polymeric insulators using fluorescent fiber and emission spectroscopy.
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement
75
, 9501910.
10.1109/tim.2026.3652713
|
Abstract
One of the major failure mechanisms in outdoor polymeric insulators is tracking. This article presents a novel dual-optical measurement system that combines fluorescent fiber sensing and optical emission spectroscopy (OES) for early detection of tracking in insulators. The proposed system captures both the time-dependent temporal features and the wavelength dependent spectral energy of the discharges simultaneously. The analysis was conducted with a large dataset of more than 1000 fluorescence pulses and 3000 spectral acquisitions during IEC 60587 tests. The progressive shift is observed in the photon emission energy from ~3.75 eV during the initial surface discharge to ~1.37 eV during the tracking stage. In addition, the stage-dependent progression of the fluorescence-based temporal features, such as rise time, pulsewidth, and energy, has also been investigated. By unsupervised t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) clustering, clear separability of degradation stages was visualized, with a silhouette score of 0.72 and 0.88 for OES and fluorescence, respectively. Field representative validation carried out on a polluted 11 kV insulator confirmed that these optical signatures remain consistent under practical conditions. The proposed method is non-contact, immune to electromagnetic interference, and suitable for automated field monitoring.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Published Online |
| Status: | Published |
| Schools: | Schools > Engineering |
| ISSN: | 0018-9456 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Jan 2026 15:15 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/184203 |
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